Thursday, March 31, 2016

Science fiction often goes way beyond where science is at
any given moment. But science has a way of catching up.

There’s been huge controversy over the use of
remote-controlled drones to kill terrorist and other enemy targets from the
air, but at least those devices have a human being sitting behind the trigger.
Going the extra step and putting a computer in charge is a hotly discussed
ethical topic, with many saying it just shouldn’t happen.

The same issue is emerging in what you might think are very
innocuous applications of the concept. For the last few years, Queensland
University of Technology has been trialling a submersible robot that can hunt,
identify and inject Crown of Thorns starfish with a bile salt solution that
quickly and efficiently kills this pest. Trials show the COTSbot is 99.9 per
cent accurate, and has the functionality to be turned over to full autonomous
operation. But it hasn’t happened yet, nor will it if the UN passes a
resolution to ban killbots.

I can see arguments for both sides. Any machine can be
weaponised, so why stop technological developments because of what ‘might’
happen? But the existence of such a weaponised machine presents a clear threat
to individuals and humanity alike. Science fiction is full of autonomous killing
machines, from Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers to James Cameron’s Terminators.
Equally, humans and machines often fight side by side in stories. Who wouldn’t
want R2D2 or Bishop from Aliens in their corner?

The UN can legislate all it wants, but the genie may already
be out of the bottle. The age of the killbot is almost upon us.

This article originally appeared in the 'Launch Pad' section
of Beyond, my free newsletter for lovers of science and science fiction. Sign
up here - http://eepurl.com/btvru1

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

With the news that new land-clearing in Queensland and other
states will wipe out Australian Government Direct Action carbon ‘savings’
(which we’ve already paid $670 million for) in just three years [Guardian
Australia, 29 February 2016], it’s time we considered carbon-reducing
activities that actually work.

At the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Paris, everyone agreed to cap global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade above
pre-industrial averages. Most scientists believe we’re well on the way to
smashing through that limit in the next few decades. But if we can wind things
back to below that level by the end of the century, we may be able to avoid the
worst effects of the rise.

CO2 was at 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial
Revolution. It’s currently at 400 ppm and global temperatures for 2015 showed a
1 degree average rise. To keep things to a 1.5 degrees increase, we need to
stay below 430 ppm, which seems hopeless given recent approvals in Australia
alone for new coal mines and oil and coal seam gas installations.

To have any hope of dropping back below 430 ppm, the world
needs to be carbon neutral by 2050. That means changing the way we do things,
including transitioning our entire carbon-hungry transportation industry to
renewable energy. But how do we capture the carbon Catpthat’s already in our
atmosphere? Planting trees isn’t enough. For a start they take up too much of
the land we need to be turned over to food production for our burgeoning
population.

One elegant solution is to create vast floating microalgae
farms in the ocean. Trials are currently taking place off the Australian coast,
and it’s estimated that a 50 million hectare expanse of ocean surface could
suck in up to 25 gigatonnes of CO2 every year while producing feed for
livestock. On its own that wouldn’t be enough to capture all the carbon
necessary to meet our target, but it’s a start.

It’s this type of innovative thinking the Australian
Government should be pouring money into, rather than the recently announced
National Energy Resources Australia (NERA) Centre, which aims to drive
development in – you guessed it – coal, oil, gas and uranium. Like Direct
Action, that’s just throwing good money after bad.

Science: one | Politics: nil

This article originally appeared in the 'Science v Politics' section
of Beyond, my free newsletter for lovers of science and science fiction. Sign
up here - http://eepurl.com/btvru1

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SF quotes

"the Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state as well as more efficient at using it once they had. That was good enough for the Culture."— Iain M. Banks